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that both desired him to take orders, and this eagerness for
the book which described places hallowed by the presence
of Jesus seemed a good sign. It looked as though the boy’s
mind addressed itself naturally to holy things. But in a day
or two he asked for more books. Mr. Carey took him into
his study, showed him the shelf in which he kept illustrated
works, and chose for him one that dealt with Rome. Philip
took it greedily. The pictures led him to a new amusement.
He began to read the page before and the page after each
engraving to find out what it was about, and soon he lost all
interest in his toys.
Then, when no one was near, he took out books for him-
self; and perhaps because the first impression on his mind
was made by an Eastern town, he found his chief amuse-
ment in those which described the Levant. His heart beat
with excitement at the pictures of mosques and rich palaces;
but there was one, in a book on Constantinople, which pe-
culiarly stirred his imagination. It was called the Hall of the
Thousand Columns. It was a Byzantine cistern, which the
popular fancy had endowed with fantastic vastness; and the
legend which he read told that a boat was always moored at
the entrance to tempt the unwary, but no traveller ventur-
ing into the darkness had ever been seen again. And Philip
wondered whether the boat went on for ever through one
pillared alley after another or came at last to some strange
mansion.
One day a good fortune befell him, for he hit upon Lane’s
translation of The Thousand Nights and a Night. He was
captured first by the illustrations, and then he began to read,

0 Of Human Bondage